Michael Ojo
Private Equity Executive and Socioeconomic Activist

I would say just continue to push and do what you feel is best for you to do. Find what really makes you excited, find what really makes you driven, do things that you normally wouldn't do. Push yourself to your limit, whatever that limit is, and really go for it. And don't ever think that there's a limitation in how great you can be or what you can be, or how wealthy you can be, and what you can do in life or where you can be in life. Anything and everything is possible. First it comes to your mindset. Make sure you tell yourself this and you believe it. And once you do that, the sky is only the starting point. You can exceed far past it, but you have to have confidence. You have to invest in yourself, take yourself seriously, and anything you want to do, you can do and will do.

The biggest lesson, to keep it brief, is life is extremely short and you want to take the time to enjoy as much of it as possible. You want to also take the time to remind yourself to enjoy everything you do and it should be with pleasure. It's not going to be with ease. There's always going to be challenges, but if you find what you love to do in every day, continue to do it. I think when we're younger, we don't have the responsibilities of paying bills or having to make money per se. We just like to wake up and play video games or do sports or hang out with friends or go to the movies or the mall. Those are the simple pleasures of life. As we get older, we now have responsibilities, so we now have to push away some of those pleasures when we're younger. And also those pleasures change as we get older, but in our lives, we should always make sure that whatever we're doing, we enjoy doing it. There's a saying that says, if you enjoy what you do, you never work a day in your life. I didn't know what that meant because I've had many a jobs where I've worked many days in my life, but now that I became an entrepreneur and I am chasing my goals and my dreams to do what I want to do every day when I wake up, I feel like I haven't worked a day and I enjoy it. And some days are tougher than others, but as long as you have pleasure and you really enjoy what you're doing, and you take the notion that life is short and that you have to enjoy the time that you have today because we don't know if we're promised tomorrow, you'll really do the most and have the most fun and enjoy life.

When I was younger I didn't do that I realized I do now. I probably should have done more of this when I was younger, a lot of my elders told me this was the way to live and I didn't want to listen. Two things, one with the body, is how you eat. I was always an active kid. So that's one of the things that for the body is very good. Moving around, getting active. Now, people have wearables where they can track their steps and track how much they're moving a day. It's important to do that. As a kid, we'd run around, bicycle, swim, play basketball, football, and have races. So the activeness of keeping your body moving is key. And especially, if can, if you're fortunate enough to have the mobility, if all the functions are working in your body, it's a blessing in itself and you should utilize that as much as possible. But what I ate, I loved all of the junk food you can imagine, all the chips, soda, fast food, pizza. Pizza Hut was one of my favorites as well as Chuck E Cheese Pizza. Things that are considered processed foods. And now, because I do take a lot more care of myself as I age, I realize that processed food was not good and conducive to a good, healthy lifestyle. So I reduced it to almost none now. But if I would've, I think I should have done everything in moderation. So, if you do want to enjoy the food, of course it's great, it tastes great, but it's not nutritionally great for us, so it should be done in moderation. That's for the body. And then the body links to the mind. We're all interconnected in that way. So, when you're eating processed food, it affects the way you think. It affects the way you act. Of course, it affects the way you move. So you want to be mindful of those things, try to eat more healthy and whole as they say, things that come from the earth that haven't been ridden with chemicals or other kind of manipulation. And then with the mind, reading is key. My parents always try to get me to read as much as possible. I hated to do it then. I love to read now and it's almost like because I'm busy with work and other things, I can't find enough time to read. And I have books just piled up that I can't wait to just sit somewhere quietly for hours and read. And I think with time I got more interested in books, but the key for me was to find books that caught my interest. And it could be whatever you like to read. For me it's biographies and business books. But if you like nonfiction, sci-fi action books, just find and do the research to find a book that you like. It could be 20, 30, 40, 50 pages. It could be a hundred, 200, 300 pages, but start to get there because reading really stimulates the mind in a great way and it really connects the mindfulness and the body connection and really makes you feel good.

I was always a person that lived below my means. And a lot of people will tell you, a lot of financial advisors will tell you, to live below your means. So that means that if you have a hundred dollars and you go to a restaurant or there's two restaurants and you get to pick which one you want to go to, and if you go to restaurant A, it'll cost you a hundred dollars, then that means that your hundred dollars will be depleted by the time you finish your meal. Or you can go to restaurant B and the meal will cost you $20. And that means that after you spend the $20, you now have $80. So that would be living below your means. Spending a hundred dollars at restaurant A would be living above your means. So most financial advisors will tell you to live somewhere in between or to be closer to B. You want to make sure you save money for a rainy day. So, when you're thinking about how you use and spend your money, you want to spend it very wisely. And there's also the word frugally. Meaning that if I have a hundred dollars it doesn't mean I need to spend a hundred dollars. We all have wants and needs, so maybe you want to go to restaurant A and you want to spend a hundred dollars, but our need is that we need to nourish ourself. So, if both restaurants will accomplish that, we don't need to spend the full hundred dollars. So, I think there's the importance of understanding that concept. I do live by the notion now that something that has changed in my life in the last couple of years, and it's kind of hard to look at it, but I have pushed myself because I invest a lot in myself and that I am motivated. I'm motivated that when I see something, I know that it's on this planet for me to enjoy. If I want to take a beautiful trip or if I want to buy something that it is expensive and is not necessarily a need, that if I know that I have the value to recreate the income or earn that income again, or make that money again, that I should push myself to attain the said product or service with the notion that I've already have a plan to make that money back that I spent. And I think that's a way to keep us pushing and motivated. And it works for some people very well, for me it has worked very well. For others it may not, but it is just aspirational. It just pushes you. And if you're pushing yourself to that limit and you can take that limit, then you should. But you have to know yourself. It's not for everybody. Otherwise it's always smart to be living within your means or below it.

I would tell my teen self, if I could look back, I was never really studious. I wasn't book smart, but I was a hustler. I loved to work, I love to make money to buy things, but also to save money. I had this fascination with earning money and accumulating it and storing it away in my closet because I always got the notion from my father that you should have money stored away for a rainy day. I didn't know when that day would come or what I would need it for, but it was always a good notion to have. So, I would say that if I could think about the dollars that I accumulated over my time from, let's say 14, when I started to work, up until I graduated high school, I really wish I had an understanding of investing it. I saved the money, which was a good starting point. I first earned money. I learned the value of hard work and earning a dollar. And then what I did was I multiplied my earnings and then I saved them. If I would've learned the next step, which is to invest it, I'd probably be in a different position today and hindsight is 20/20 and I don't regret anything. But now with the understanding of what I know, I try to spread that amongst others, students and others peers, to let them know that if you have a good strategy, you can do a lot with money and money as a tool. And I just wish I knew a little bit more and was a little bit more proactive with my savings back in the day to maybe invested in a compound.

There is a lot of pressure. I deal with my own stress and anxiety too. And ways I've now dealing with it is therapy and I also do yoga. But prior to that, I found things that I truly enjoyed to do. And when I did those things, I blocked out all the noise that’s around it. So, if I know that I get stress from too many people calling at once or seeing too much activity on social media, or too much white noise around me, I kind of just detach from that and ground myself. And one way I do it is I take a long walk and I'll leave my phone at home and I'll go for a walk and just think positive thoughts and just really kind of be with myself and appreciate all the things that I appreciate that I could go for a walk, appreciate the fresh air, appreciate being able to just have the freedom to do this and live where we have all these opportunities at our front steps. And that's how I've been able to achieve it. Also, I have good friends and family, and if you have a very good circle of people you could trust, those people are very helpful in making sure that they don't want to see you stressed as much as you don't want to be stressed. So you have that trusted party of people who you can always reach out to. And when you identify those people, you really just hone into knowing that you can trust and rely on them when you need them the most. And that's important too.

We cannot replenish time. We can replenish money. So I've realized with life, and this took me a lot of time, is that one, if you do what you love, then you're already in the right direction of how to spend your time wisely. And if you do that as much as possible, then you really have a great life. But I would say the biggest component for me in understanding time and how to manage it is to really organize yourself and prioritize. Know what you want, with your life and your time, and be intentional about how you're using that. I'm still getting better at that today, and I think that's something we'll always work on as we continue to build and grow. And so, with that, I've started to use spreadsheets, calendars, and planners to really kind of utilize my time properly. And I'm trying to get more finite with every hour of my day, which is something of a new journey I'm embarking on now. Because I want to know if I have typically 16 to 18 hours of the day that I'm up, how am I using that 18 hours if I'm carving out eight hours of that day to spend it with family and friends? I want to be intentional to be there with family and friends during that eight hours. And if I'm spending another six hours focused on work or a deal that I'm doing, I want to hone in and just copy and focus on that time for work. So it's just being intentional and understanding the minutes, the seconds, the hours that you have and every day. And a great quote is we all have the same 24 hours. So, when we look at celebrities or people we deem as very successful and we're like, how did they get there? What was their trick? Well, I'll tell you this, they have the same time. We have to make those aspirations come to life. So, once we know how to utilize that time, as they've utilized it, we can get a lot done.

Friendship is special. I've realized that as I got older, I know a lot of people are very friendly. I talk to a lot of people, but using the word friend is a serious word because these are people you can count on with your life and you may only have one, two, or three or a handful of them that you can really say are true friends. Other people are great acquaintances and that's always great to have as well. But friends are key to your life to make sure that you live a very high quality and high caliber life because they are the ones who can basically are looking at you from an outward position. We can't see ourself from the same position they can, and they're the ones who are going to guide you if you're misstepping and kind of encourage you when you're trying to grow. So I would say I've been fortunate to have a good group of friends that have been able to help me and guide me throughout my career. And without them, I don't think I'd be where I am today.